The History of the Balmoral Cairns

Around the world and since ancient times humans have used piles of rocks to mark summits, trails, religious sites, and even graves. In the UK in Gaelic languages these piles of rocks or stones are called cairns. They can be small or large, humble or pyramid-like. In Scotland near the famed Balmoral Castle that was so beloved by both Queen Victoria and Queen Elizabeth II, there are many cairns, some constructed in honor of dearly departed royals. Today we dive into the history of these unusual royal landmarks.

Happy Memories and the First Royal Cairns

The original Balmoral Castle in Aberdeenshire, Scotland, was constructed on a plot of land that had been owned by nobles since the 14th century. While several different house has been built on the property, including one with towers that was altered in the early 1800s, the castle that’s there today is the design of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert and their architects, John and William Smith.

The queen first visited in 1842 and ten years later had purchased the estate and had begun building the Gothic style castle, a design meant to remind Prince Albert of his native Saxon duchy, what is today the state of Thuringia in Germany.

No doubt the queen’s summers spent in the Scottish estate were filled with many happy memories, which makes it all the more intense that there are so many cairns on the property, many of them built for her loved ones.

The purchase of the estate in 1852 was preceded by a period of leasing the property. The growing family needed a bigger place to house their many children and staff. They built a grand house to match their growing family onsite. With the building works also came the construction of cairns. In 1848 the first of Queen Victoria’s cairns was built to commemorate the couple’s time at the estate. The queen also had cairns built to celebrate the marriages of her children, beginning in 1858.

The extensive grounds of the area were something that drew Queen Victoria in. Deer stalking, bird hunting, and hiking among the waving grasses and winding paths were some of the family’s favored activities. They fell in love with both the quietude and the landscape with the River Dee running through it. The cairns only added to the beauty of the place and emphasized the remoteness and the sheer size of the 50,000-acre estate.

Cairns of Sadness

The queen had a troubled relationship with her mother, the Duchess of Kent. After the very sudden death of her husband when the future queen was an infant, the Duchess of Kent (a princess of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld) was left alone and in debt in a country not her own. Unsurprisingly she enlisted the help of a trusted advisor, John Conroy, who became a controlling force in the lives of both mother and daughter for the next 2 decades.

While the young Victoria was educated well, with opera lessons, instruction in art and music, and a healthy knowledge of several languages, she was not allowed much of a social life or indeed allowed to make her own decisions very often. This led to a lot of tension between the triad and by the time she took the throne in 1837 the resentment towards her mother was overwhelming.

Years later the two reconciled after the birth of her first child, likely due in part to Albert’s urging. When her mother died in March of 1861 Victoria was crushed to learn through her late mother’s letters that maternal love had been present despite the controlling efforts. Her grief was as intense as her power struggles had once been and Victoria erected a cairn at Balmoral in honor of her mother, whose body was entombed in a mausoleum at Frogmore House near Windsor Palace.

One of the biggest losses of the queen’s life was her husband, Albert, which came in December of the same year, only months after her the loss of her mother.

Victoria and Albert were besotted from an early age and spent a great deal of time together, forgoing some of the royal traditions of living largely separate lives. So when he died unexpectedly from typhoid fever in 1861 the queen’s heart was well and truly broken. While his body is interred in the Royal Mausoleum at Frogmore House, Queen Victoria had a huge pyramid-like cairn built at Balmoral to honor his memory. She wrote to her uncle, “My life as a happy one is ended! The world is gone for me!”

Queen Victoria had nine children with Albert and even being royal wasn’t much protection from disease and infection. One of the cairns at Balmoral is for Prince Leopold, their youngest son, who died in 1884 at age 30 after suffering from hemophilia his whole life. Queen Victoria lost two more children before her death in 1901 at the age of 81.

Balmoral Today and Modern Cairns

Each descendant of the throne has enjoyed spending time at Balmoral, usually in late summer. It’s where Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Phillip took their honeymoon and now King Charles has made a number of improvements to the property in light of the increasing number of tourists who come to take in the royal history and natural splendor of the estate.

Today Balmoral is open for tours when the royal family isn’t there, usually in winter. The trails that surround the castle lead to the many cairns, though not all of them are easily accessible. There are currently sixteen cairns in total on the site, not including one constructed for Queen Victoria’s beloved personal servant, John Brown, which was later removed by King Edward VII. Two cairns were also constructed to celebrate the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II.